Jackson: Two different types of democracy in primary fights for open House seats

Two House districts dominated by Democratic voters in New Jersey will elect someone new to Congress this year.

And on paper, it will be the voters in the June primaries who pick the party’s nominees to replace former Rep. Rob Andrews in the 1st District and Rep. Rush Holt in the 12th District.

But the process of putting names on the ballot shows how democracy means different things in different parts of the state. In only one of the races, the 12th District, is the primary competitive; in the 1st District, it appears the selection has already been made for the voters.

The 1st and 12th districts epitomize districts around the country that were drawn to give one party an advantage over the other — the practice is called gerrymandering. The Democratic candidate for president, governor or senator since 2004 has averaged 63 percent of the vote in Andrews’ district and 64 percent in Holt’s.

“The Democratic nominee, whoever that is, is likely to be elected,” John Weingart, assistant director at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, said of the two districts. “So if there’s not a primary or even much public discussion before an agreement on a candidate, it does short-circuit the process.”

Once someone in a gerrymandered district wins a seat in the House, he or she usually gets to stay. Since 1976, the reelection rate for House incumbents nationally has dropped below 90 percent only two times, to 88 percent in 1992 and 85 percent in 2010.

The House turnover in 2010 included the ouster of freshman Democrat John Adler by Republican Jon Runyan in the 3rd District, which is almost balanced between normally Republican and Democratic voters. Following Runyan's decision to retire after this year, handicappers are calling the race to succeed him a tossup.

In both competitive and non-competitive districts, Republican and Democratic county party organizations can give the candidates they favor an advantage in primaries by placing them on the same ballot line as other organization-supported candidates. In some counties the decision on who gets the spot on the line is decided by the party chairman. Sometimes it’s an executive committee or a screening committee, but usually the chairman decides who serves on those committees. A few counties have an open convention and fewer never award a party line.

Primary voters, especially Democrats, tend to vote the line, which in this year’s primary will start with Sen. Cory Booker and go on down to municipal seats.

In the 1st District, the story on Feb. 4 that broke the news Andrews was resigning also said that state Sen. Donald Norcross — the brother of George Norcross, the South Jersey political leader — was running to replace him.

Three days later, Donald Norcross’s campaign released a list of 167 endorsements, including the entire Democratic delegation representing New Jersey in Washington, 20 fellow legislators and 48 municipal party chairmen. The list also included labor leaders, community activists and seven county chairmen — even though the district covers only parts of three of them, Burlington, Camden and Gloucester.

The message was clear: Don’t bother running, the organization has made its pick. Norcross faces two challengers, including Logan Township Mayor Frank Minor, but they are running up a steep hill.

“I think democracy today is being overrun by people who have money and just decide they’re going to anoint people,” Minor said. “I think people should have a choice in terms of who their representative should be.”

By contrast, when Holt announced on Feb. 18 that he would not seek reelection, a crowd of state legislators said they were interested in running. Three eventually filed to run in the primary, each representing different legislative districts that cross the 12th Congressional District.

The district is one of those mapmaking curiosities, mixing people oriented toward New York City with those whose local TV news covers Philadelphia. It includes tony Princeton, urban Trenton and Plainfield, and plenty of suburban bedroom communities.

The candidates — Assemblyman Upendra Chivukula of Somerset County, state Sen. Linda Greenstein of Middlesex County and Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson Coleman of Mercer County — are busy battling for endorsements, raising money and talking about campaigns that will go from neighborhood to neighborhood.

Greenstein is bracketed on the ballot line with Booker and the candidates for freeholder and local office in Middlesex County. Chivukula has the party line in Somerset, and Watson Coleman has the line in Mercer and Union counties.

Some machine politics is playing out. The Middlesex chairman, Kevin McCabe, declared Greenstein the favorite without considering the two others, even though Chivukula represents part of the county in the Legislature.

“We would have hoped for a more open process and an opportunity to be screened for the endorsement in Middlesex, but I can’t say it’s a surprise,” said Henry de Koninck, Chivukula’s campaign manager. “That’s New Jersey party politics, the backroom kind of wheeling and dealing.”

As it stands, though, there is a real race taking place, and groups that want to define what it means to be a Democrat are engaged.

Watson Coleman, for example, was endorsed by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a nationwide ultraliberal grass-roots group that says its small donors played a big part in her reported fundraising total of $120,000 in just four weeks.

The committee previously backed Holt in his unsuccessful bid last year for the nomination to fill the remainder of Lautenberg’s term. One of the reasons it chose Watson Coleman was that Greenstein told them she didn’t know if she would be as progressive as Holt in the House, said Adam Green, co-founder of the committee.

He said Chivukula was not considered because he sees this as a two-woman race. He also paid Greenstein a backhanded compliment.

“Linda Greenstein smartly ran cautious campaigns in a moderate swing district,” Green said of her legislative campaigns, “and Democrats need her to stay in the state Senate to keep that seat.”

Greenstein’s campaign says she’s well positioned, however, precisely because she has experience running competitive campaigns, including a race last year in which she and her running mates spent $1.3 million to win, an effort that put her name in front of a lot of voters only last fall.

Meanwhile, Washington Republicans are not looking at these districts at all. The chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, said he was confident his party would retain the state’s other open seat, in the 3rd District, but the 1st and 12th are “more problematic for us.”